Unless We Remember
by MissRizu
Summary: Based on the movie Maurice. One year after Maurice disappears, Clive sees Alec in the street.
1. Chapter 1 - Alec and Clive

Alec pulled but the grip on his arm was firm, and he was held fast by the man in the fine pressed suit and starched collar. He was still breathing heavily. He had thought he would be able to outrun but Mr. Durham had been determined. And now he was speaking in a smelly side alley with a gentleman - his former employer - who probably still did not know his first name.

"You realize I left my cab in the street, and shall probably miss my appointment, having chosen to spend my time running the streets after you?"

"I don't know anything about all that, sir."

If Maurice were here he could talk to Mr. Durham. But he was not here. It was Alec who had been seen by Mr. Durham. Now pinned in a firm grip Alec dared not push away, and listened instead to a steady stream of well phrased accusations. Alec could sense but hardly respond to Mr. Durham's frustrations. Half his words made no sense - the man seemed to have thought himself into a proper muddle, unable to get his thoughts into a straight line. Maurice would do that sometimes, as well - Alec supposed it was an affliction of the upper classes.

"You are the same Scudder who was in my employ until a year ago? Answer me."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, where is he then? Don't look at me that way, you know very well who I mean," and then, pulling Alec closer, close enough to smell the scents and pomades on the other man's hair and skin. "Are you living together then?"

"I'd rather not say, sir."

Somewhere a carriage raddled by, voices from the street reaching them as a distant hum. "Do you know who I am, Scudder?"

"Yes. You are Mr. Durham."

"Do you know what I am to Hall?"

Of course Alec knew. Mr. Durham had been Maurice's first love, his great love, and Alec could hardly help the anger and yes, jealousy, that curled in his stomach whenever he thought of Mr. Durham, usually an anger dampened by remoteness and removal but now sharpened by the iron grip on his arm.

But Alec knew also that how much he knew and how much he could say aloud, here, in the street were two very different species of animal.

"You are his friend from school. I met him at your house," and then, after a pause that weighed heavy with the recognition neither of them were satisfied with this reply, Alec added, "I know that you abandoned him."

Mr. Durham's face flickered, something that might be anger flashing beneath the cool gentlemanly veneer.

"He abandoned us when he took up with you."

Alec would not allow Mr. Durham to talk like he had some ownership of Maurice Alec did not, some stake in Maurice Alec did not share. "Maurice made his own decisions, sir. I am sure he would tell you so."

"He is Maurice to you?"

"Yes. And to him I am Alec."

Mr. Durham stood, undoubtedly thinking some fancy thoughts and tying himself in knots, and he would try to wrap Alec in those tangles as well. Alec pulled on arm, but Mr. Durham's grip only tightened. They were not done yet, though Mr. Durham had ceased talking. Alec could not guess what the man was thinking. Anger, disgust, condescension - anything and everything might be flickering beneath that cool surface. Alec could not read him. Even in the very beginning, Maurice had never seemed as remote as Mr. Durham.

"You know that his family are quite concerned for him," Mr. Durham said at last. Family, alright, we will talk about family. "I receive letters from his sisters often, and you understand it is difficult for me to have nothing to tell them."

"I would say that is your own doing, sir."

"You understand it is difficult for me not to know where he is. What he is doing."

"I shouldn't think you would care as much as that. From what Maurice said."

Mr. Durham's grip tightened briefly. "And what has Maurice said?"

"He has said he was in love with you but you did not love him."

"Maurice said that? Rather crude phrasing."

"The phrasing is my own, sir."

"Of course."

Mr. Durham was silent again. This was probably the longest any gentleman save Maurice had focused on him for so long, and Alec was finding he did not like the experience. Mr. Durham seemed to want things from him there was no way for Alec to deliver, and the feeling of failing to please this gentleman who had been his employer - whatever he had also been to Maurice - made him feel deeply uneasy. Even though he shouldn't. He owed this man nothing. Should be angry at the way he treated Maurice, made him sad and frustrated for so long. But somehow it was not anger he felt.

"I don't suppose Maurice has spoken in particular depth or detail about the genesis of our friendship. It's long standing nature, or my own attempts to retain the connection, even after he told me of his, entanglement, with you. I would still like to help him. If you care about him, I would expect you to allow me to do so."

"With respect, sir, we don't need-"

"Don't misunderstand me, Scudder," and there had returned to Mr. Durham's voice a hardness that made Alec straighten his spine. "There is no "we" in what I am saying - I should expect you to disappear. And I would be willing to pay to assure this occurrence."

Any softening of feeling Alec had been experiencing towards Mr. Durham died in an instant.

"I don't need your money."

Mr. Durham's eyes scanned him - no doubt noting the rough cut of his clothes, the holes in his jacket and trousers, the dirt on his boots, and Alec felt the hardening of anger in his chest, like a cooling lump of molten steel.

"Quite. Then you will do it for Maurice's own benefit. You know he has a future, a position he could take. It is not too late for him to return."

"I am not going to leave him so long as he wants me to stay," Alec said. "You didn't want him."

"You know nothing about what I want, Scudder," Mr. Durham said, and for the first time there was open anger in his tone. Alec responded to the anger and wanted more. He didn't like this talking. He didn't like this feeling of disapproval, the undercurrent of disgust. He wanted Mr. Durham to shout at him or let him go, not keep them here in this tableau. He thought he knew how to get himself released.

"I know you didn't want to sleep with him. Sir." Mr. Durham's eyes widened, and he did drop his hand and curled his nose as though Alec's skin had started emitting a foul order. Alec didn't care. He rotated his shoulder, glad to reclaim his arm as his own. He could have left then but found he had more to say, and felt freer now he was no longer physically restrained. "Well I did want to, sir, and I do. And you can't have him back."

"That is not the issue-"

"With respect, sir, it is. You may have hidden it in your fancy words, and I am not good with those. But I am good for Maurice, he has said so."

"You are good for Maurice? You have no idea what you are talking about," Mr. Durham's voice was now unquestionably heated with anger and Alec considered that a victory. "I suppose it would be too much to expect you to be able to recognize that love - and I did love him - that love can exist above these baser, passions, to which you have enticed him. I do not even know why I am bothering to have this conversation with you. It is clearly beyond your comprehension. No fault of your own, though I would have hoped Maurice would require a bit more from his companions. However -" and now Alec felt his heart racing as it would before entering a fight, though he felt the answering hum of anger from the other man. "I will tell you, Scudder, you will inform me of Maurice's location or I will be forced to get the police involved."

"There will be no need for that." They both turned to see Maurice in the doorway. He was dressed lightly, in undershirt and pants, and had clearly come down with the intent of looking for Alec's return. He regarded them both now coolly. "The police, Clive, truly? I hope you did not mean it."

"Maurice-" Alec watched Mr. Durham's eyes flicker over Maurice's body; looking, Alec knew, as good as it ever had, with his work at the gymnasium increased to many hours daily. "Of course I would have been circumspect in my report. I would not have told them anything unnecessary."

"Unnecessary? There is much in all this that is unnecessary it seems to me, Clive."

Clive. Alec's skin crawled. There was in their exchange a familiarity that twisted in Alec's gut. Alec wanted Maurice to tell Mr. Durham to leave, preferably with some show of the passionate anger that Maurice had displayed couple of times they had discussed the topic of Clive Durham. But there was nothing, just a silence that stretched until Mr. Durham spoke.

"You should really write your family." Family again.

"I have written them. I have told them not to look for me."

Alec felt a flare of the possessive pride. He supposed he should feel bad that Maurice had been forced to sacrifice his family - but he didn't. They had each other. That was all they had, and all they needed.

But here was Clive Durham, crashed in. And Maurice was not telling him to leave.

No, Maurice was smiling at him. And it was the smile that Alec coveted whenever he saw it directed at himself - a smile tinged with comfort, and a species of respect. Alec knew Maurice hated the weakness that had prevented Mr. Durham from loving him fully, but knew also Maurice respected the intellect and learning Mr. Durham projected like the fresh scent of the pomades in his hair. Sweet. Artificial.

Alec knew this because he often saw those flashes of disappointment, when a topic was broached about which Alec had no knowledge, a reference unknown, a quote unmemorized. At those moments the unsaid overlay of _Clive would have known_ would rise like smoke between them, dispersed later by laughter and wrestling and sex, but never fully expelled.

"You are living here?" Mr. Durham said finally, and there in the words was the distaste Alec would have expected from a gentleman regarding their walkup. Maurice did not seem to mind.

"Yes."

"Are you going to invite me up?"

Alec saw the moment of Maurice's surprise, then the moment it was repressed. He turned and began up the steps and Mr. Durham followed. Alec brought up the rear, watching Mr. Durham's shoulders move beneath his fine jacket. He had a great overcoat hung over his arm, and a fine watch at his belt. Their neighbors would think they were being visited by a barrister, come to tell them of some fine inheritance, most like.

But that would not be what was discussed, Alec felt. Because in the relative privacy of their room he suspected the topic could turn to what

Mr. Durham had made plain that he wanted Maurice back, but in what capacity? What would Mr. Durham do to get Maurice back? Alec's fears were flared with the knowledge there was nothing he would not do or pledge to get Maurice as his own. He trusted Maurice's professions of love, trusted too that Maurice this morning had no intention or wish to alter their relationship.

But he knew too that Maurice had loved Clive Durham with a passion that bordered on obsession, and that Durham had felt something for Maurice in return. And Durham could return that position which Maurice had abandoned, and that more than anything made Alec fearful. For now Maurice had tested what it was to live as not a gentleman, he might justifiably wish to return back. It was this more than anything that shook Alec to the core.

So it was with a species of apprehension as yet unknown to him that Alec climbed the stairs behind Mr. Durham, ready to hear the man attempt to take his lover from him, and unsure whether he would be able to generate words honeyed enough to induce Maurice to stay.


	2. Chapter 2 - Clive and Maurice

They reached their rooms and pushed open the door, and Alec was struck as he always was by pride at their shared space. It was two rooms, well furnished he thought with piece they had bought together, a table and three chairs, a chest, even a bookshelf with a few of Maurice's books which Alec was determined to make his way through. In the second room, through a half-opened door, a single bed on which he noticed Mr. Durham's glance linger.

"Here was are. Not so different from school, really," Maurice said, and Alec felt a pang of jealousy at the shared history. Cambridge. Maurice had gone to Cambridge, and though he did not discuss his times as a student often Alec knew those memories were there and wrapped together with Clive Durham.

"I would beg to make a distinction from the rooms at Cambridge. You can't mean to live like this, Maurice."

"I do mean to, Clive. I _am_ living like this."

"A mite better than a boathouse," Alec said, earning himself a smile from Maurice and a bonus look of confusion from Mr. Durham.

"Boathouse?" Mr. Durham said.

"Never mind, Clive. What brings you here? You will not try to tell me you happened to be in the area?"

"I might have been driving these ways looking for you, yes."

Alec felt a jolt of jealousy. It had been a year. Why would Mr. Durham still be looking after a year? Alec had taken for granted that the meeting had been by accident. But it seemed not.

"I want you to come back," Mr. Durham declared. It sounded like a proclamation. Some not-yet buried part of Alec felt the inevitability of anything declared in that voice. It would happen, he would even have to help, if ordered. Alec shook off the feeling. Maurice was not affected, Maurice just sat smiling a thin, tired smile.

"To what?"

"To, everything. Your family, your job. Or if you fancy something different I can get you a separate post."

"I had heard of your election. Congratulations."

"Thank you."

There was an awkward silence, as long as any yet, as Alec tried and failed to remember the election in which Mr. Durham had run and won. They had never talked about it. Maurice must have been watching on his own. The thought made Alec ill and angry, even while his seeming solid resistance to Mr. Durham's request for a return made him something else. Grateful?

"I do not need a position, new or otherwise. I am content to stay here."

"Now you may be. But what of the future?"

"You know I have always said I do not need name and position."

"You have said that. But you cannot mean it," Mr. Durham turned them suddenly, unexpectedly to Alec. "You. You can't mean to keep Maurice here," Mr. Durham's hand gesture encompassed the room, the apartment, their life together. "You must know what it is to be poor. You won't pull him down into this."

Alec was still. Realizing he was expected to speak, and that what he would say would not be what Mr. Durham's wishes, he wanted to say it well. "I think it is Maurice's decision how he wants to live, sir. We are doing well enough without position."

"You know I do not speak only of position," Mr. Durham said, and he was speaking mainly to Maurice again. There was a fission of anger in his tone that had not been there previously. Alec imagined it was due to his reply, and decided to ignore all other feelings but pride. He would not be nervous to talk. This concerned him as well.

"What then?" Maurice asked softly, after giving Alec an approving smile.

Mr. Durham's eyes flickered again to the room, the bed with their great blue blanket partly visible through the door. Alec had not made the bed this morning yet - the virtues of living on their own, no one there to tell him to straighten the bedding. Maurice did not care. The result was the sheets and blankets were still tangled from last night's lovemaking. Alec was fairly certain he could pick up a faint scent on the air as well.

"What of lord Ridley? Of Oscar Wilde?"

Maurice's thin smile slid closer to a frustrated scoff. Alec was holding his breath.

"The accusation shall not come against me. I have no intention of seducing any wayward lords with vengeful fathers," Maurice paused, and Alec's skin crawled at the look that passed between them. He was reminded again that Mr. Durham was not a disinterested friend. Jealousy churned in his stomach like a live thing, like he had drunk too much of Maurice's dark coffee. Mr. Durham was not looking for Maurice in this part of London because they were friends. He was looking because they had been some kind of lovers. And Maurice had been unhappy, frustrated, and rejected.

"Did you two never have sex then?" Alec asked, and was rewarded by a look of horror from Mr. Durham. But the momentary thrill of victory left quickly. Instead of answering Mr. Durham sat heavily on one of the chairs, draping his coat across the table. He did not look at Alec, did not look at much of anything, instead locking eyes on the books in shelf as though reading and re-reading the spines.

"Never," it was Maurice that answered, and quietly. The pain that was in his voice made Alec regret his question. He had meant to make Mr. Durham uncomfortable, not Maurice. "Alec, I am sure we would rather not discuss it. It might be easier if you went to the other room. This will not take long."

"Sorry," Alec said, and meant it. It was painful, watching this discussion. The words were heavy and underlain with a time he did not know, like a language he did not speak. He did not like it. He stood, deciding on his own to move into the other room. The door was not yet fully closed behind him when he stopped, hearing voices start again in the next room. He knew listening was wrong. But it was a small wrong, and so he remained by the door.

"I wanted to," the words, from Mr. Durham, were quiet and still, like a fragile flame exposed to the elements. "I badly wanted to. Many times I badly wanted to."

"I know," the reply, equally soft and equally flickering. "But that is in the past."

"Yes," a pause, and the next words were less proculatory and more beseeching, though the answer was already known. "You will consider coming back? Letting me help you?"

"I cannot, Clive. You know I cannot."

A pause. "Then can I see you, on occasion?"

"You cannot think that a good idea."

"We are not so weak we cannot be friends."

"I was never as strong as you thought I was."

"No. You were stronger," a pause again, in which Alec could hear blood pounding in his ears like a second heartbeat. "That boy. Alec."

"He is not a boy, Clive. He is the same age as I."

"That, man, then," the pause this time was heavy. Alec wanted to push in the door and step through, see the faces, but dared not for fear of missing the words. "You are happy?"

"As happy as I have ever been."

"Truly?"

"Truly."

Happy. That Maurice was happy with him Alec did not really doubt. But that Maurice had missed Clive Durham had also been plain. Alec was not so simple as to expect single minded devotion - it would have been strange, unnatural even, to receive something like that from someone like Maurice. But over time, carefully, they had built this thing between them that Alec had himself been calling happiness. As happy as I have ever been Maurice had said - Alec spun the words in his mind, thought he knew them for what they were, that Maurice would not trade what they had for whatever had existed between him and Clive Durham in the past.

This was new truth for Alec, and he would need to let it settle in. Mr. Durham spoke again.

"I am not happy, Maurice. I thought I might be, with time. I am aware my life is one many would envy. Anne often says as much, to attempt to cheer me up. It is difficult to discern one's own state of mind accurately - the lack of any real objective criteria by which to measure makes it impossible. But if I were to measure my state now with myself at prior times in my life, I am not happy."

"You are over thinking again. Men are often less happy once their school days are finished."

"It is not just that."

"I know."

Another extended silence. Alec focused on the crack in the door, through which he could just see Maurice's hand, resting on his knee. His fingers were curled, slightly, into the fabric of his pants leg.

"You were not happy when we were together, either, before Greece. I have often thought how I might have driven you to that illness. It pains me."

"I know."

There was another extended pause, in which Alec listened to his breathing and the pounding of his heart. The room around him was darkening. Often in this room, at this time, they were already naked and wrapped together and Alec's thoughts were less tangled. He felt Maurice's absence like a missing limb, noticeable in its absence.

"You do not miss me?" Mr. Durham's voice came. It sounded tired. Without seeing the man, hearing just the voice, Alec could almost imagine him as something other than the imperious overlord or Maurice's cruel friend. Could almost feel sorry for him. The feeling was new, unexpected, and twisted strangely though not unpleasantly in Alec's chest.

"That is hardly a fair question."

"I suppose not. You suppose that boy of yours is listening?"

"His name is Alec," and then in a voice only slighter louder. "Alec if you are listening you may as well come back. There is little reason for subterfuge at this point."

Subterfuge? Even having Mr. Durham around for a half hour had gotten Maurice using fancy words again.

Alec stepped out from behind the door. He refused to look abashed, or even acknowledge he was listening. It was his right. Maurice was his lover. His. He walked over and placed a hand on Maurice's shoulder, remembering how the bare skin felt against his palm when he gripped Maurice there when they had sex. His fingers tightened.

Frequent, often, sometimes multiple times and recently in creative positions. Maurice loved him, spent time with him, talked with him and read to him. They had money enough, and here in this part of town there was no one to care about what they did. Alec was not given to flights of introspection, but he knew he was happy.

Mr. Durham watched the hand Alec had placed on Maurice's shoulder.

Alec had though of Mr. Durham more as a concept, a position, than as a human being. Flesh. Blood. He knew that he had been Maurice's friend and supposed he had a personality, an individuality that Alec had just never been allowed to see. But here, in the soft light of falling night Alec could see the man seemed beautiful, even fragile in a way he had never associated with the titles and properties. Behind the prickly intelligence that bit like barbed wire was something soft and vulnerable. Weak.

Mr. Durham stood, pulling on his long jacket with precise through tired movements. "I should leave, and attempt to make my second appointment. I may indulge myself by telling Ada I have heard from you and you are . . . happy. But I shall not tell them where you are."

"Thank you."

They looked at each other, Maurice in his under sleeves and this man in full evening dress. Then Mr. Durham stepped pass them and through the door, the sound of his footfalls echoing back to the room as he descended the steps.

Maurice did not stop Alec when he went down the stairs. Alec caught up to Mr. Durham when he was already on the street. The falling darkness cast their shadows long, laying them together against the pavement.

"Mr. Durham," the man turned, his figure obscured by jacket and darkness combined. The light of a lamp flickering alive lit his face in a wavering brightness. "If you felt all that, why didn't you figure out a way to have him?"

Mr. Durham sighed. "I suppose it has to be amusing that it turned out this way. I thought I could keep him by locking us both in a garden of my making, but he could not help but eat the fruit and now appears to be happy in his position of expulsion."

Alec figured this was some kind of metaphor, not his realm so he ignored it, continued on with what he needed to say.

"I do not know about all that, sir. But I think he will be happier now that he has seen you. As happy now as he has ever been. I guess what I mean to say sir," Alec stopped, took a breath, and said loudly and looking straight at the gentleman in front of him, "Thank you."

Mr. Durham looked startled, then smiled. It was thin, and a bit forced, but it lit up his features. Alec wondered that he had never noticed the dimples, never noticed the way they altered the severe lines of Mr. Durham's face and made him seem almost a schoolboy. A sad, world-weary schoolboy.

"It seems you are stronger than I am, Alec."

"Not stronger, sir, I think. Freer."

Mr. Durham looked at him for a long moment, and Alec felt here in the falling dark was the only time Mr. Durham had ever really seen him. Then the man turned, pulled his coat around his neck, and blended into the night.


	3. Chapter 3 - Maurice and Alec

"Tell me about it?" Alec said.

The light broke in through the window and stretched across their bed, warm against this flushed skin. Alec's muscles were feeling loose and drained. He splayed a palm over Maurice's breast. The muscles seemed further defined everyday - he was certain he would always love Maurice's body, even when it was older and squishier and lost this toning, but he would certainly enjoy this while he could.

Maurice capture his hand and kissed it.

"About what?" Maurice said. His high-brow tones still fell strangely on Alec's ears, that they were this close together. Even after a year of this intimacy he still sometimes wondered at the strangeness, wanting to laugh or shout his fortune to the world. Look, I am worth something. This gentleman chose me.

But today he had a slightly different feeling, a different mission.

"Tell me about Mr. Durham."

Maurice's muscles tensed. But Maurice did not pull away. Alec had only been slightly worried he would. They talked about everything now. The intimacy at first had been gradual, with a tactic barrier around that prior time with Clive Durham. But since the visit a month ago even the walls of that last fortress had been crumbling. Maurice had mentioned Clive twice - of a trip together in town, and of music.

Alec watched Maurice's lips, felt the thrill of pending exploration at his words. "What do you want to know?"

"I want to know everything," Alec said, and thought he might have overreached when Maurice drew in a breath. Alec judged things needed softening so he leaned up, placed a kiss on Maurice's still swollen lips. Pulling back Alec looked Maurice in the eyes, mere inches away. "I suppose you pursued him?"

"And why would you suppose that?" Maurice, as Alec had hoped, kept the tone light.

"With the way he is, I thought it would be difficult otherwise," Alec said. He had tried to imagine it, how the two had met as young men. He imagined Mr. Durham as the young men at the houses where he had worked, intelligent, aloof, not much different from how he was now. Young Maurice Alec found it difficult to imagine. He thought of a confident sportsman, curt, serious, but well liked, though this picture was influenced by his knowledge of his current lover. He wanted to know more.

"Clive was not always as he is now. There was a time," Maurice paused, brows coming down. Alec held his breath. "There was a time when he spoke more of approvingly Plato."

Alec's heart sank. Metaphors were his least favorite types of answers. "Can you translate that from Oxford-speak?"

Maurice shifted, pulling back, and Ale thought maybe the question had proved too heavy for Maurice and it would now end. Alec looked at the discarded clothes on the ground. Maurice would need to leave soon for the gymnasium, perhaps he would claim he needed to get a head start. That was fine. Alec would just try again later. It was only a matter of time before he figured out the proper way to get information from Maurice.

But Maurice did leave the bed. Instead he pulled himself upward on the bed, resting his hands behind his head, and Alec settled back in on his side, leg just lightly brushing Maurice's own.

"He pursued me," Maurice said. He was speaking to a corner of the ceiling, not to Alec, but he was speaking. "I think I would never have thought of it if Clive had not started things."

Alec scoffed, swirling his palm against the sheets. "Surly you would have thought of it. It if not a difficult thing to think."

"You did not know me then. I was not very self aware," Maurice was still speaking to the ceiling. "You know, I went to a psychiatrist."

Alec could not help but laugh. "That's stupid. You ain't sick, whatever those gentlemen say. This thing, it's common enough. People don't talk about it, but it's common enough. No one says anything about it neither long as your discrete."

"That might be true. For you," Maurice looked down then, reaching out to smooth a piece of Alec's hair. Usually Alec would resist such a tender gesture, but he allowed it now. Maurice smiled. "I was turned around for a while. Not to say I am not now either, but I have improved along this dimension at least.""

"So that's why you ended it with Mr. Durham? Because you thought you were sick?"

Maurice sighed. "No. He ended it."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"It must have been hard, I think."

"Yes," Maurice's jaw worked, the muscles in his neck tensing. "I was angry with him, at the time. More angry that I have ever been, before or sense. It felt like the most basic form of betrayal."

"I could imagine, I think."

Maurice looked at Alec a moment, blue eyes considering. "Yes. I think you could. Alec, all of this is in the past. I do not feel the same way as I once did. I hope you are not concerned that Clive's recent visit did anything to shake my commitment."

"No, no, it's not that. I know it's in the past." Alec pressed his lips to Maurice's chest, loved the shiver that arose at the contact. "I just want to understand. When we met, you were angry with Mr. Durham? When I saw you in the window, you were thinking of him?"

"Yes. I was always thinking about him."

Alec considered. He knew he was pressing his luck asking even this many questions, but Maurice was looking up at him with newly heated eyes and he risked asking, "But you never had sex?"

"We never did," Maurice's voice was low, strained, husky with building want. One of Maurice's hands came up to rest on Alec's hip, curled into bruises that were still fresh. His breathing was increasing and Alec knew they were both calculating the time between now and when Maurice would have to leave. Alec calculated there was time for a few more questions.

He leaned forward, lips brushing Maurice's as he said, "Was I then your first?"

"And only."

Alec licked his lips. The hand on his hip tightened, and he felt the question there, the request. Alec was suffering from a swelling in his heart that almost distracted him from his questions, almost had him moving beneath Maurice's palm, sliding back together in what had become so easy for them but still managed to feel amazing each time. Maurice had not been his first. But the other times, hurried and messy and occasionally tender but more often rough as well as rushed, seemed a different thing to this. But he had a few more questions, a few more things to say. Sex could wait.

"And you noticed me, before I came in through your window?" Alec said, and Maurice's eyes went soft. "You wanted me?"

"Of course I noticed you. You helped me move a piano," Maurice said.

"Other than the piano. You wanted me, right?" Alec said. Maurice moved a hand up to cup Alec's cheek, moving so their foreheads were nearly touching.

"I wanted you. I felt you were sent to me, for my patience."

It was Alec's turn to be silent. He remembered how it had felt, climbing that ladder to climb in Mr. Durham's guest's window. Mr. Hall. Alec had been fairly confident of his reception, but he had not been _sure._ From bits and piece of conversation with Maurice, Alec knew now some of the instances he had interpreted as signals had not been intended so by Maurice at the time, at least not intentionally. Sometimes he thought what he had done was overly reckless, dangerous, that he was lucky to have not been completely mistaken, and he had once or twice imagined what might have happened in that room had he misjudged.

But most of the time he felt as Maurice said. _Sent to me._ That they found each other was a reward. Maurice, for his patience with Mr. Durham, Alec for putting up with working at the Durham's for a whole year.

"When you came to me in town," Maurice said, and his voice was soft. "You told me you did not come to gentlemen like that. I was glad, when you told me. I thought it meant something to you as well."

"It did. I hadn't ever been with no gentleman before. Any gentleman," Alec corrected himself. Maurice's gentle attempts to correct his grammar were a bit of a joke between them, that most times like now he was able to take lightly. Though it brought him to mind again of Mr. Durham, how he would not only be able to match Maurice's gentlemanly phrasings and diction, but had even surpassed him. They had been at Oxford together. Might as well have said they had been on the moon.

"Mr. Durham's a real gentleman." Alec said, and Maurice's eyes crinkled.

"You're suggesting I'm not?" Maurice said, the smile still in his voice, though his look had changed.

"You're more of a gentleman than me, that's for sure." Alec said. "Not the same sort as Mr. Durham, though, I should think. Not the sort that has a country estate, a position in the community. Not the kind what goes and wins elections."

"You have been thinking about this," Maurice said. He was running a hand up and down Alec's arm, and Alec knew he was still hot for sex, would want to get to it before he had to leave, and Alec was certainly feeling the fire of desire building in his cut. But Alec had just a few more things to say.

"Yes."

"And have you come to any conclusions?"

Alec had, but he was not sure if Maurice what like what he had to say. But he quickly resolved to say it anyway. They didn't hide things, and this was what he had been building towards, in a way. What he wanted to talk about with Maurice because it was confusing and unexpected, and he felt strange carrying it by himself. It seemed it had less to do with him and more to do with Maurice.

"I'm sorry for Mr. Durham."

Maurice drew in a breath and was silent for a moment. At last Maurice said, "That is very magnanimous of you."

"Is it?" Alec said. He was not sure if this was good or bad.

Maurice had tightened his grips on Alec's skin, as though tethering them together. Though Alec could still feel Maurice's desire, it had hardened with the addition of something else.

"I am not sorry for him," Maurice said. There was a tinny coolness in Maurice's tone that Alec had rarely heard. "Clive made his decisions. He chose his life, no one forced that upon him. He may have been afraid, he may have had a reason to be afraid. But we all make choices. I will not feel sorry for the ones he made. You need not either. I do not want you to burden yourself with the malaise of Clive Durham."

Maurice's warm skin was a contrast to the cool words. Like a man become aware of eyes on his back, Alec became aware of the room around them, without removing his eyes from Maurice. It was small and the plaster on one of the walls peeling. They used a bathroom down the hall in common with other tenants, and cooked by an open window for fear of smoke. Alec knew the houses of Maurice's youth, because he had worked in them. Not even in them, he had been deemed to rough even for that, but on the grounds.

Alec was breathing heavily, and there was something in him that burned from this extra anger, extra force that had entered into Marice's arms. Hours spent boxing at the gymnasium had made him strong, and he might even be able to hold Alec down, if he wanted, and Alec wasn't going to lie to himself that was a little thrilling. But another part of him knew this was bad. Maurice had cared for Mr. Durham, whatever else, and this anger meant something deeper Alec had yet to uncover. Might, Alec released, never be able to uncover, no matter how many questions he asked.

But there was no more time for questions, and Alec allowed himself to be pulled into a kiss, deep and heady and spiced with some of this anger, and as he allowed himself to be rolled on his back and felt the hands, lips, teeth and tangle of sheets rushing past his skin he knew one thing was true and would remain true no matter what Maurice said or how Maurice himself felt, felt it was he arched his back and sank into the sensations and careful attentions bestowed on him by his gentleman-lover.

Alec would always feel sorry for Clive Durham.

_End_


End file.
